Press versus Black Blocs

Since the protests started on june 2013, the press has been a target of some of the revolted young people. Last week, after the journalist from TV Bandeirantes, Santiago Andrade, died on consequence of a firework explosion detonated by one of the Black Bloc protesters, this confront was more than evident. On one side we had still some of the same voices (that supported the violence of Black Blocs from the beginning) trying to downsize the meaning of the death, at the same time we had somewhat an overreaction on part of the media.

Before going further on this issue it is necessary to clarify somethings. The press has always been in the radar of leftist movement's critic in Brazil. And it is not without any reason: part of Brazilian press supported the military cup of 1964 (namely through the work of a liberal journalist called Carlos Lacerda, that latter turned against the regime) and a greater part just omitted the critic to the regime in order to keep running. Globo Television is seeing as a member of the later, especially after they called a immense manifestation for the direct presidential election as a commemoration of the city of São Paulo's anniversary. 

This is on the roots of the anger against the media. At almost all the manifestations and protests I covered at some point I could hear protesters shouting: "Fora Rede Globo, o povo não é bobo"(something like "Go away Globo Network, people are not stupid"). Not surprisingly protesters attacked reporters from day one, but maybe because the violence coming from the police was bigger (with a photographer losing the vision of one of his eyes due to a rubber bullet), the press focused its attention to the violence from the police. Latter, namely in Rio, O Globo started covering more closely the actions of Black Blocks that managed to remove the multitudes of protesters from the streets through their violence (the phrase if from a musical producer from Rio, I just borrowed). 

This week main TV news shows devoted a lot of time to give a proper dimension of Santiago's death, and ask for Justice (16 minutes in Jornal Nacional, of Globo TV, and 15 minutes in the Jornal da Band, of the Bandeirantes television, where Santiago worked). The two young Black Blocs responsible for the death were quickly arrested, in Brasilia, deputies were quick in drafting laws against protests, from an intelligent one that typifies the crime of disorder (allowing the police to actually remove people with rocks and dangerous behaviors from the protests, something they couldn't do due to a gap in legislation) to extremely dangerous ones, such as the one that relates protests to terrorist activity. 

That's not part of the overreaction, yet. For me, the overreaction came with the attempt of putting the decentralized group of the Black Blocs as part of a leftist movement aimed to create chaos on the verge of the World Cup. Newspapers quickly assumed, basing on vague an unconfirmed declarations, that the Black Blocs were connected to PSOL (a leftist party, that is very active in the protests) and quickly connected them with a Rio deputy, Marcelo Freixo.

The press steps back
Today, on their sunday edition, both Folha de S. Paulo, and part of O Globo, acknowledge part of the overreaction, which is a good thing. Folha devotes a full page to understand the movements behind the protests, and differentiate leftist, anarchist and other independent social movements from the Black Blocs. Folha also ran a survey in Rio that shows that more than 70% of the people still supports the protests, event almost 100% (I believe 98% or so) are against any act of violence from protesters and the police. Stories about the need to train better the police also were published during the week, which is also aiming to the correct direction.

The impression I get, looking from a big distance, is that finally the Black Bloc has lost its momentum. The group seduced part of young people that don't see any chance of manifesting themselves in the country's democracy, as correctly pointed out Vladimir Safatle, on Globo News this week. It is not the case that the country has no means of participating, we actually have a lot of institutionalized ways of participating, but they are opaque to the vast majority of the population. In the roots of this problem is the traditional lack of political participation among the whole population and the huge disbelief in the political parties (a disbelief that is more or less occurring also in developed countries).